Thanks for all the positive feedback for the last summary!
This is a summary of traffic on the python-dev mailing list between
Feb 15 and Feb 28 (inclusive) 2001. It is intended to inform the
wider Python community of ongoing developments. To comment, just
post to python-list@python.org or comp.lang.python in the usual
way. Give your posting a meaningful subject line, and if it's about a
PEP, include the PEP number (e.g. Subject: PEP 201 - Lockstep
iteration) All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas
discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on a
PEP if you have an opinion.
This is the second python-dev summary written by Michael Hudson.
Previous summaries were written by Andrew Kuchling and can be found
at:
http://www.amk.ca/python/dev/
New summaries will appear at:
http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
and will continue to be archived at Andrew's site.
Posting distribution (with apologies to mbm)
Number of articles in summary: 400
| ]|[
| ]|[
60 | ]|[
| ]|[
| ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
40 | ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
20 | ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
| ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[ ]|[
0 +-033-037-002-008-006-021-071-037-051-012-002-021-054-045
Thu 15| Sat 17| Mon 19| Wed 21| Fri 23| Sun 25| Tue 27|
Fri 16 Sun 18 Tue 20 Thu 22 Sat 24 Mon 26 Wed 28
A slightly quieter week on python-dev. As you can see, most Python
developers are too well-adjusted to post much on weekends. Or
Mondays.
There was a lot of traffic on the bugs, patches and checkins lists in
preparation for the upcoming 2.1b1 release.
backwards incompatibility
Most of the posts in the large spike in the middle of the posting
distribution were on the subject of backward compatibility. One of
the unexpected (by those of us that hadn't thought too hard about it)
consequences of nested scopes was that some code using the dreaded
"from-module-import-*" code inside functions became ambiguous, and
the plan was to ban such code in Python 2.1. This provoked a storm
of protest from many quarters, including python-dev and
comp.lang.python. If you really want to read all of this, start
here:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-February/013003.html
However, as you will know if you read comp.lang.python, PythonLabs
took note, and in:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-February/013125.html
Guido announced that the new nested scopes behaviour would be opt-in
in 2.1, but code that will break in python 2.2 when nested scopes
become the default will produce a warning in 2.1. To get the new
behaviour in a module, one will need to put
from __future__ import nested_scopes
at the top of the module. It is possible this gimmick will be used
to introduce further backwards compatible features in the future.
obmalloc
After some more discussion, including Neil Schemenauer pointing out
that obmalloc might enable him to make the cycle GC faster, obmalloc
was finally checked in.
There's a second patch from Vladimir Marangoz implementing a memory
profiler. (sorry for the long line)
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=401229&group_id=5470&atid=305470
Opinion was muted about this; as Neil summed up in:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-February/013205.html
no-one cares enough to put the time into it and review this patch.
Sufficiently violently wielded opinions may swing the day...
pydoc
Ka-Ping Yee checked in his amazing pydoc. pydoc was described in
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-January/011538.html
It gives command line and web browser access to Python's
documentation, and will be installed as a separate script in 2.1.
other stuff
It is believed that the case-sensitive import issues mentioned in the
last summary have been sorted out, although it will be hard to be
sure until the beta.
The unit-test discussion petered out. Nothing has been checked in
yet.
The iterators discussion seems to have disappeared. At least, your
author can't find it!